$2.05 for that Photo
On 14-May-2012, ShutterStock Inc has filled its IPO to raise $115 million. IPO: Initial Public Offering, the first sale of stock by a company to the public on a stock market. Part of being a public company, it must file on quarterly basis audited financial statements and need to provide guidance on what they expect…
BIG, BIG WARNING & CORRECTION
The standard practice, when filing financial statements with the SEC (Security Exchange Commission), is to provide audited financial statements. It is legal to provide unaudited financial statements provided it is disclosed, but it raises all kind of warnings. It makes people, including me, ask the questions: “Why are the financial statements not audited? Can I trust this information?â€
SHUTTERSTOCK IMAGES LLC
UNAUDITED PRO FORMA CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEET
Until now, ShutterStock Inc was a private company and did not have to reveal any of its financial information, of its value, of how it operates its business.
Part of its IPO filing, ShutterStock had to reveal the number of it's customers, its sales, its expenses… and most important: the value of its average sale.
The 2011 total sales revenues were $120 million, a 45 percent increase over 2010 revenues of $83 million and nearly double the 2009 revenues of $61 million.
The average price users paid per image download in 2011 was $2.05.
May 2012, SEC Filing for ShutterStock Inc.
ShutterStock was founded in 2003 and was the first company to use the subscription-based pricing. For $250 month or $2,559 per year, users can download up to 25 images per day (2011 numbers). The subscription is directed toward corporate buyers.
- This is the average!
- This is the total dollars divided by the total number of photographs downloaded.
- This is not the value of your favorite landscape.
- This is not the value of your best portfolio image.
- This is not the value of an XSmall or an Xlarge image.
It's an aggregate.